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The Humanist Disaster Recovery Drive is raising funds to help victims of the recent Ecuador earthquake. On Saturday, April 16th, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit about 17 miles (27km) from Muisne, Ecuador at a relatively shallow depth of 11.9 miles (19.2km). Shallow earthquakes create more damage because of their proximity to the earth’s surface. On Sunday evening, the government reported that 246 people had died and 2,527 were injured.

With estimates of at least $100 million dollars in damage, a state of emergency has been declared and the casualties and damage reports are expected to rise as the rescue effort is ongoing. Disaster relief organizations such as Team Rubicon, UNICEF, and International Medical Corps are watching the situation and are expected to mobilize soon, and the Ecuador Red Cross has already mobilized in the affected region.

But there was one particular piece of this willfully ignorant, laughably hateful dreck that jumped out at me:

And yes, I know Persepolis started as a graphic novel – and very good it is too. But it’s an exception to the general rule that if you need to shave, you should be reading books where you have to make the pictures in your own head.

Really? Are we still, in 2016, seriously considering the question of whether comics and graphics novels are a serious form of literary art?

No. We’re not.

Mr. Rigby, I have a memo for you from 1992. That’s the year Maus won the Pulitzer Prize. It was the first graphic novel to do so. Maus is widely considered a watershed — not so much within the comics world itself, artists and fans had known this was an important art form long before that, but in the mainstream recognition of comics.

There was a time when comics were considered silly and childish, and artists and fans had to fight for critical recognition. But that time is long past. That time is so far in the past, it’s old enough to drink. The list of counter-examples is so long, you could spend a lifetime reading nothing else and still not make a dent. Comics and graphic novels have had widespread critical recognition for decades. Maus won the Pulitzer Prize in 19-freaking-92.

When you start rambling about how childish comics are, you’re not making comics look foolish. You’re making yourself look foolish.

So when you start rambling about how childish comics are, you’re not making comics look foolish. You’re making yourself look foolish. You aren’t just undercutting your opinions about comics or pop culture — you’re undercutting your opinions about culture, period. You’re making yourself look willfully ignorant, willfully out-of-date, unwilling to consider the possibility that your personal aesthetic tastes do not constitute a substantive social critique. And you’re not going to be taken seriously by anyone other than the rest of the Old Men Cloud-Yelling Society.

ACT UP 25 memorial, corner of 18th and Castro, San Francisco. Man grieving in front of posters of people who died of AIDS. Photo by Greta Christina.

What did we hope to accomplish?

Quick summary, for the six of you who were vacationing on Mars and may have missed it: Hillary Clinton recently said this utterly fucked-up thing about how Ronald and Nancy Reagan had “started a national conversation” about HIV and AIDS, and praising Nancy Reagan’s “low-key advocacy.” The Internet exploded with queers and others screaming about how this not only erased the reality of the many AIDS activists who actually did start the conversation about AIDS, but rewrote the history to laud the very people who had ignored AIDS, perpetuated the shame and silence about it, and caused the deaths of millions in the process. Clinton issued a brief apology on Twitter: the Internet exploded some more, with queers and others screaming about how this was nowhere near good enough, how Clinton’s historical revisionist bullshit needed a much stronger and clearer response than a 140-character apology. Clinton finally issued a more thorough statement, spelling out that the Reagans did not start a national conversation about HIV and AIDS, acknowledging the activists who did start the conversation, and discussing the history of AIDS and AIDS activism in the U.S.

After the first apology, during the second round of the explosion, a number of people expressed bafflement and even disapproval at the exploders. “Why do you have to keep talking about this?” they asked. “She apologized in her tweet. What else do you want? You’re giving Donald Trump and the GOP ammunition. Why don’t you let it go? Why do you keep pressuring her? What do you hope to accomplish?”

Speaking for myself, and for some others but not all: What we hoped to accomplish was the second statement.

We got Clinton to learn some important history that matters to us, and to use her sizable platform to educate others about it. We got millions of other people to learn this important history. We got the actual national conversation about AIDS that she’d claimed the Reagans had started. We put a serious dent in the disgusting, revisionist Reagan hagiography — and we got Clinton to help us do that. And we got her to realize that we are not to be fucked with, and that she cannot take us for granted.

The second statement was not perfect. I wish she had explained how she made this ghastly mistake in the first place; I wish she hadn’t praised herself and her platform (that definitely undercuts an apology); I wish she had actually said “I’m sorry” (she did in her tweet, she didn’t here). But there were things about the statement that were surprisingly good. It was a pretty good brief summary of the history of HIV/AIDS, and the points it addressed about the current U.S. epidemic and what needs to be done about it were very on-point: a number of people I know who work in public health or HIV say it could have been written by one of them. And she gave a shout-out to ACT UP, which was surprising and awesome. I’m not sure any serious Presidential candidate has done that before.

We would not have gotten any of that if we hadn’t kept pressing.

When you saw the Internet explode, you weren’t just seeing a Presidential candidate criticized for a dreadful gaffe. You were seeing over 25 years of pent-up grief and rage.

There’s something important about this incident that I think some people may not be tracking on. It’s almost impossible to convey what it was like to be in the LGBT community during the worst years of the AIDS pandemic, when your friends and community were dying in huge numbers, the government was ignoring it at best, and most of the world was laughing, scolding, shaming, shunning, or worse. The scars from those years run deep (here is an extraordinary piece of writing about it by Tim Kingston on the Grief Beyond Belief website). And there were so many people who had to put a lid on their grief when it was happening, who had to just put their heads down and cope. When people saw the Reagans being lauded as heroes of the epidemic — the very people who were arguably most complicit in what can fairly be described as a genocide — the lid came off. When you saw the Internet explode, you weren’t just seeing a Presidential candidate criticized for a dreadful gaffe. You were seeing over 25 years of pent-up grief and rage.

I’ll be honest and clear: It wasn’t just straight people, or people who didn’t live through the worst years of the pandemic, who were trying to convince us to quit screaming. LGBT people, people who were around during those days, were saying it as well. There is, of course, a huge variety among our community, including a variety of responses to AIDS and the way people speak about it. And when it comes to an issue that’s this emotional, this traumatic, this loaded with personal grief and political rage, it can be hard when other people who went through it are responding differently; when other people are more pragmatic or more ideological, more diplomatic or more hard-assed, more willing to forgive or less. My own general rule is that, within some obvious broad limits of ethics and legality, people get to speak about their own marginalization any way they like, and people get to decide for themselves who they forgive and when. When emotions are running high, though, I get that this can be hard.

But speaking up makes a difference. Demanding accountability from the people who represent us, or who are asking to represent us, makes a difference. Do not tell people who went through a genocide how to speak about it.

(Note: Please DO NOT turn this into a Sanders/Clinton election thread. I will enforce this, possibly without second chances.)

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“If you’re such a feminist, why didn’t you say anything about this particular incident? If you care about social justice, why weren’t you willing to debate that guy? A major news event happened this week — why were you just writing about pop culture?”

It occurs to me that this is just another way to trivialize and silence. The expectation that every writer address every topic that’s even vaguely in their wheelhouse — it’s ridiculously burdensome. If that’s the bar for participating in public discourse, it’s so high a kangaroo couldn’t jump it. And it’s another way to control the conversation. Privilege includes getting to decide which topics are important and which ones aren’t — whether that’s telling people to calm down about things they’re upset about, or telling them what to aim their anger at instead.

So because I’m tired of answering this question, and other people are tired of answering this question, I’m writing this all-purpose reply we can link to any time it’s asked.

Why didn’t I write about (X)? The reason could be any of the following:

I was busy writing about something else.
I was on deadline writing about something else.
I was recovering from the really hard work I put into writing something else.
I’ve been writing about that topic a lot lately, and decided I needed to change it up a bit.
Lots of other people were writing about it, and I didn’t feel a need to add my voice this time.
I didn’t hear about it soon enough for my contribution to be timely.
My ideas about it are complicated and still developing, and I didn’t want to think out loud on this one.
I knew it would spark a firestorm of controversy, and I didn’t have time or energy to handle it that week.
I was sick that week.
I was taking care of personal business.
I was on vacation.
I was taking a mental-health break from heavy topics.
I was writing about some other heavy topic.

Finally, and most importantly:

I was writing about cats or chocolate pie or Steven Universe, and it’s none of your damn business what I write about. I am not a public utility: I am not a fire hydrant of insightful commentary for you to point at any issue you’re interested in. The people who get to do that are the editors who pay me money. And I am not the New York Times: I don’t even pretend to write all the news that’s fit to print. I write all the news that catches my attention at a moment when I have time and energy to write about it.

If there’s an issue you think I might be interested in, by all means send it my way: just don’t do it with a sense of entitlement. If I have a pattern of missing a particular issue that would normally be in my wheelhouse — like there’s a form of marginalization I consistently overlook when I write about social justice stuff — please do let me know about it. And if a writer or publication does aspire to be the Progressive Times, the Feminist Times, the Atheist Times, it’s worth looking at holes in their coverage. But even the Feminist Times couldn’t address every single incident of sexism and misogyny. It’s transparently laughable to insist that this makes everything they say irrelevant.

If you like my writing and are interested in what I write about, read it. If not, don’t. But do not try to shame me out of writing by setting an impossibly high bar and berating me for not clearing it. I write about plenty of weighty topics, and you don’t get to tell me which ones. My voice, my right to decide.

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In December 2015, world leaders are convening in Paris soon for the critical U.N. climate talks. The Letters to the Future project is collecting letters written to future generations of their own families, predicting the success or failure of the Paris talks and what came after. (The letters will be sent to targeted delegates and citizens convening at the Paris talks.)

Are you living in a reasonably healthy world? I don’t imagine you’re in a Utopia: I know human nature too well. But are you okay? Is there enough water, food, power, medicine? Is your daily life manageable, even joyful?

Or is it too hot, too dry, to sustain human life in any tolerable way? Is the world overrun with famines, mass migrations, epidemics, wars? Does my beautiful city of San Francisco even exist, or have the waters risen and drowned it? Are you not even reading this letter, because the world has disintegrated so badly that “reading letters from the past on the Internet” is not a priority, or even an option?

Did we fix this in time?

I think about social change activists of my day, and I often wonder if we’re all fools. If we don’t fix global warming, every other fight we’re fighting — for fair housing and voting rights, against misogyny and racism and plutocracy — will be a moot point. If we don’t fix global warming, now, today — game over.

I know that’s not fair. I know we all need to do the work that inspires us. And I know all these struggles are connected. Part of the reason I work so hard for a more rational, evidence-based world is that I want more people to acknowledge that global warming is real, and to take it seriously. But I often wonder if all of us — not just all activists, but all humans — are foolish beyond description to work on anything but global warming, with every scrap of power we have.

I’m an atheist and a humanist, and I have no notion that there’s another life, another world, where everything will be okay. I accept that this life is our only one, this planet the only home we have. If we don’t fix global warming, it’s game over. And I love this game. I love life. As terrible as it can be, as much as it’s filled with suffering and brutality, I love life, and humanity, and the world. So I’m working to get this right. I’m persuading as many people as I can to get this right.

In July 1938, when polled on their attitudes toward allowing German, Austrian & other political refugees to come into the US, two-thirds of Americans said we should try to keep them out. Another 18% said it would be okay to accept them, but only if it didn’t mean raising our immigration quotas. Less than five percent said we should encourage them to come.

There are already people rushing to explain why these situations are not the same. There are already people rushing to insist that the Syrian refugees are part of ISIS or Al-Qaeda (“the Jewish refugees are dangerous anarchists and communists!”); that the Syrian refugees won’t be able to assimilate because they have low IQs (seriously?); that the two situations can’t be compared because reasons, or no reason given at all. Of course the situations aren’t identical: no two situations are. But they are damn well similar enough that we should be paying attention.

The Syrian refugees are not ISIS. The Syrian refugees are fleeing from ISIS, and from conditions created by ISIS. Let’s not repeat one of the most shameful mistakes in our history. Let’s not have to explain to our grandchildren why, in one of the greatest humanitarian crises faced by our generation, we let fear and willful ignorance overcome compassion.

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So there’s this interesting social justice question that has some people puzzled. Why do businesses and businesspeople continue to do things that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, classist, etc. — even when it works against their own immediate, tangible interests?

I was thinking about this when I was listening to the Cracked podcast interview with Andrew Ti, of Yo, Is This Racist? Ti was talking, among many other things, about TV producers who are weirdly not cranking out a dozen “Empire” ripoffs — even though the show is hugely successful, and even though TV is one of the most derivative industries around. (Ti was mostly talking about the sad excuses given by network execs for why they weren’t making more shows like “Empire.”)

But this question comes up a lot. It comes up in discussions of why bakers won’t sell wedding cakes to same-sex couples — even in the midst of a same-sex wedding boom. It comes up in discussions of housing, and why landlords and homeowners are less likely, even flatly unwilling, to rent or sell to black people. It comes up in discussions of hiring, and why employers reject highly qualified job candidates who would contribute greatly to their company, simply because those candidates are women/ people of color/ transgender/ otherwise marginalized. It’s absurdly common for businesspeople to perpetuate bigotry, either consciously or unconsciously — even when it means the loss of immediate, substantial profit. And this cuts across a large variety of businesses.

Sometimes this phenomenon gets treated with bafflement. “They’re so foolish! Don’t they realize they’re losing money?” Sometimes it gets treated as cause for optimism. “This means we’ll eventually win! Market forces and natural greed will break down bigotry and oppression! Capitalism will prevail!”

I don’t see it that way. I think it says something completely different. I think it says this:

The fact that people keep doing bigoted things, even when it works against their immediate financial interests, shows just how valuable privilege is.

Even if you lose money by not making a dozen “Empire” ripoffs, you still gain by perpetuating white privilege.

Even if you lose money by not renting or selling to black people, you still gain by perpetuating white privilege.

Even if you lose money by not hiring talented women, you still gain by perpetuating male privilege.

Even if you lose money by refusing to sell wedding cakes to same-sex couples, you still gain by perpetuating heterosexual privilege.

Etc.

Think of it this way. Think about affirmative action, and the arguments that are most commonly marshaled against it. “You’re lowering the bar! You’re diluting the talent pool! By going out of your way to look for qualified black people, Hispanic people, women, disabled people, LGBT people — you’re discriminating against all those super-talented straight cisgender able-bodied white guys!”

If we think about this “reasoning” for six seconds, it becomes clear how absurd it is. Expanding a job search to look for qualified people who might not otherwise have been considered — that’s not diluting the talent pool. That’s expanding it. That’s getting more talented people into consideration.

If you only have to compete against straight, white, cisgender, able-bodied, middle-class men — you’re going to do a whole lot better than if you’re competing against, you know, everyone. And if you’re only okay at your job — which, let’s face it, an awful lot of people are — more competition means you won’t do so well. (To use just one example: When Major League Baseball began to racially integrate, a lot of marginal white players wound up getting cut.)

And jobs are just one example. This phenomenon plays out in pretty much every business where conscious or unconscious bigotry exists — which is to say, pretty much every business.

Privilege is profitable. It’sprofitableinthousandsofobservable, well-documentedways. It’s profitable in the long run, in the medium run, in the short run. In the (usually) unconscious cost-benefit analysis of “bigotry” versus “equality,” privilege is so profitable that perpetuating it is worth losing out on large bundles of cash being dangled right in front of your nose.

So what do we do?

We need to keep putting on the pressure.

We need to make it a whole lot harder to be bigoted than it is not to be. We need to make bigotry more inconvenient, more time-consuming, more costly. When businesspeople say and do bigoted things, we need to make it result in a PR nightmare and some expensive lawsuits and a whole bunch of customers saying, “Screw you, we’re taking our business elsewhere.” Market forces are not going to do it on their own: we need to create the forces that push things in our direction. (Please note that when pundits decry the so-called “witch hunts” and “lynch mobs” consisting of a whole lot of people on the Internet saying, “That’s racist,” “That’s sexist,” “That’s transphobic,” etc. — they’re basically saying, “Please stop putting pressure on people to not be bigoted. Please stop making bigotry inconvenient.”)

Privilege is profitable. We need to make it a huge pain in the ass. We need to make the cost-benefit analysis skew on the side of equality. We need to make bigotry not worth it.

Tuesday July 7 is one of our Casual meetups — we’re not picking a topic ahead of time, we’ll just chat about whatever comes up. Conversation is usually related to sex, sexuality, gender, atheism, religion, skepticism, science, etc. — but not always.

On Thursday July 16, we’re picking a discussion topic ahead of time — and this time, the topic is After Marriage Equality, What’s Next? Marriage equality is now legal across the U.S. So what’s next for sexual and gender politics? In the fight for secular sexual liberation and against the religious right, what issues should be our priority? Should we be focusing on transgender rights, employment and housing discrimination, homelessness among LGBT teens? Should polyamorous marriage be on the table? How shall queer communities face the problems of racism and classism? And how can atheists and skeptics support the fight for secular, evidence-based policies about gender and sex?

So please join us! Community is one of the reasons we started Godless Perverts. There are few enough places to land when you decide that you’re an atheist; far fewer if you’re also LGBT, queer, kinky, poly, trans, or are just interested in sexuality. And the sex-positive/ alt-sex/ whatever- you- want- to- call- it community isn’t always the most welcoming place for non-believers. All orientations, genders, and kinks (or lack thereof) welcome. Admission is free, but we ask that you buy food and/or drink at the cafe if you can: they have beverages, light snacks, full meals, and milkshakes made of literal awesome sauce.

Many progressives responded as if Scarborough had threatened to set himself on fire. And many of those progressives responded to this supposed suicide threat with glee. They said things like, “I’ll give him the matches,” and, “Can I bring the marshmallows?” When the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality came down, they called for Scarborough to make good on his supposed promise, and mocked him for not doing it. (This isn’t just one or two people, either — it’s been all over my Facebook feed.)

I have a couple of problems with this. One, as Ed Brayton (Dispatches from the Culture Wars) has pointed out repeatedly on Facebook, is that Scarborough’s statement was not, in fact, a threat to set himself on fire. It was an absurd statement of a willingness to fight marriage equality to the death — but it wasn’t a threat to kill himself by burning. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about my other problem with this progressive response.

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I’m writing this to other queers — and I’m writing it to straight/ cisgender allies.

Last Friday, when the Supreme Court ruling came in about same-sex marriage, I wrote this:

We won marriage. Let’s take this weekend to celebrate. It’s Pride Weekend in San Francisco and in many other cities: let’s take this weekend to celebrate, to recognize the hard work we put into this and to to enjoy our victory. And on Monday morning, let’s roll up our sleeves, and get to work — on employment rights, on housing rights, on homelessness among LGBT teens, on school bullying, on the epidemic of violence against trans people and especially against trans women of color, on the hundreds of other ways that LGBT people are still treated as second-class citizens.

We won marriage. Let’s take that momentum, take those changed hearts and minds, and put it to work.

If you’ve been working for marriage equality — in any way, whether that’s volunteering, donating money, doing visibility on social media, simply talking about about it with your family and friends — thank you. That is awesome. And we’re not done. For LGBT people, equality and an end to bigotry and hatred and oppression are by no means over. We’ve won the right to marry. I think it’s an important right. But there is a lot more work to be done.

So let’s keep this momentum going.

Every day this week, I’ll be posting about a different LGBT rights organization. Please support them however you can. That can mean with money, of course — even small amounts help, and small automatic monthly donations help a LOT. But you can also support LGBT organizations by following them on social media, and helping spread the word about their actions and fundraisers. That’s a small, easy thing to do — and if a lot of people do it, it can make a real difference.

The #MyNameIs Campaign is a coalition of drag and other performers, transgender people, Native Americans, immigrants, domestic violence survivors, and allies who advocate for the reformation of Facebook’s dangerous and discriminatory “real names” policy. In October 2014, the #MyNameIs Campaign received a public apology from Facebook and a commitment to allow all users to express their “authentic identities” — however, they have yet to see substantive change in the company’s policies or procedures and are continuing to apply pressure. The #MyNameIs Campaign is organizing around three main demands: they’re demanding that Facebook remove the “fake name” reporting option; stop asking for ID; and create an appeals process.

Please support them with a donation if you can. Please follow them on social media: they’re on Twitter at @TeamMyNameIs , and they’re on Facebook at facebook.com/mynameiscoalition. And if you have a story about Facebook’s harmful “real names” policy, please consider sharing it with them — they will (of course) protect your privacy, and will publicly share only the information you’re okay with them sharing (including no information at all — they’re also gathering stories for statistical purposes that aren’t being publicized at all). Please support them any way you can. Thanks!

And if you have suggestions for other worthy LGBT organizations, please make them in the comments!